A week after Carbon County extended its disaster declaration related to the COVID-19 pandemic until July 31, the commissioners are still waiting for more instruction on federal CARES Act funding.

“I know everybody has been asking about our funding that we’re getting. Well I still did not get the guidelines to give it away, how to give they money for grants to boroughs and how they’re going to have it broken up,” Ahner said. “But I think one thing is that we will be the administrators for the money.

“I know there were questions of if this had to go directly to the borough, or townships or how it was going to be. But yesterday we did look into it, and we might be looking into hiring somebody to look over this money, because we could wind up getting 10,000 bills sent to us that have to be approved and it has to be all COVID-related.”

Ahner said commissioners expect to meet with someone from the governor’s office next week “so we’ll have guidelines for where this money can go.”

The county will receive $5.796 million in federal CARES Act funding to help address impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Commissioner Chris Lukasevich said they had received correspondence regarding the funds just before the meeting began, but that it required further analysis before he could speak on it.

“We still have to go through it and see what it really says,” Lukasevich said. “But it literally just came in.”

Commissioners’ Chairman Wayne Nothstein stressed that it was not something they could rush through.

“It’s going to be extremely time-consuming and complex how this is going to happen,” he added. “It’s even possible some of that funding could go away; until that check is in our hands we don’t know.”

Ahner again urged those seeking relief to monitor their expenditures.

“Everybody should be keeping track, record, of what they’re spending,” Ahner said. “If they bought a tent to have their business open; if they bought a laptop for work or to work at home … keep track of it, because we need the documentation. Because at the end of the year, we will be the ones getting audited for it, and we have to do it correctly.

“And this amount of money that we’re getting, is an enormous amount of money. I don’t want to give any of that back. I want to give it to the people that need the help.”